the role of language
- Thread starter fela fan
- Start date
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
maomao said:Very Watership Down.
Syntax is a specific ability that humans posess and no other species has ever been shown to. I don't know what all the 'play' stuff is supposed to prove at all.
Maybe it proves conceptualization, the ability to think beyond the concrete.
As the article says, no one is pushing the notion that animals have linguistic skills on a par with humans. But the evidence of even rudimentary linguistic ability could mean that this skill isn't unique to humans.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Double post.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Maybe the truth will out when we PET scan a signing chimp to see if corresponding sites to Wernicke's or Broca's areas of the human brain, are being activated.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
fela
OK, now we're talking...Let's take a few points:
1. My 'contradiction'. It's not contradictory of me to say I disagree with your assertion that there is a universal truth and then asking you to explain what you mean. My position, as you know, is that truth is subjectively experienced by each human through all their senses (langauge is one part of how we construct reality because it enables us to create context for our other senses - for example by naming a flower 'sunflower' we can infer that it's a flower that has 'sun like' qualities), so the notion of universal truth simply doesn't exist - for all we know we're inhabiting separate micro-universes that interact with each other and the planet and a wider, bigger macro-verse to create sensate experience. So I simply ask the question what do are you getting at by universal truth - what does/will it tell us? Will it offer the secrets of the quatum world? Cold fusion? Will it tell us the Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything, but be unable to tell us the question? I need to know what you mean by this 'truth' and how it can be universally applied to everything in the universe - all 14,000,000,000 Light years of it!!
2. Talking of contradictions:
Looks to me like you want to replace language mate. Maybe you consider the term 'going beyond' to not be the same thing, but you clearly want/need to have something in place of how we currently communicate should it not proove adequate to the task of finding Universal Truth.
In other words you want/need to replace it becuase it restricts our thinking.
3. All freedoms carry boundaries. Absolute freedom would be being allowed to do literally anything without censure, conscience or guilt - e.g. kill at will with no remorse, no social or psychological mechanism blocking my actions. And for all you know that may be how we get to the UT - to act without boundaries -and even that model has it's own, inbuilt limitation in that you are under threat from anyone else wishing to kill at will. All you'd do by removing word based language (as opposed to say visual, aural or smell) is create another set of boundaries in your search.
Please note that all I've done here is quote what you said in response to my questions, not put words in your mouth. I'm interested in this debate because I have often argued that one of the reasons science can't explain the possible existance of phenomena like ESP is because we don't the language or instrumentaiton to explain and measure the physical activity that happens, so any possible solutions will be appreciated!!
I note that you talk about finding the UT 'in nature'...again, you need to be more specific because at the moment it's all woolly, airy terms supported with subjective comments like 'the miracle that is me or you or any human being''
And what is to say that your new form of communication won't be equally adept at spreading falsehood?
OK, now we're talking...Let's take a few points:
1. My 'contradiction'. It's not contradictory of me to say I disagree with your assertion that there is a universal truth and then asking you to explain what you mean. My position, as you know, is that truth is subjectively experienced by each human through all their senses (langauge is one part of how we construct reality because it enables us to create context for our other senses - for example by naming a flower 'sunflower' we can infer that it's a flower that has 'sun like' qualities), so the notion of universal truth simply doesn't exist - for all we know we're inhabiting separate micro-universes that interact with each other and the planet and a wider, bigger macro-verse to create sensate experience. So I simply ask the question what do are you getting at by universal truth - what does/will it tell us? Will it offer the secrets of the quatum world? Cold fusion? Will it tell us the Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything, but be unable to tell us the question? I need to know what you mean by this 'truth' and how it can be universally applied to everything in the universe - all 14,000,000,000 Light years of it!!
2. Talking of contradictions:
Looks to me like you want to replace language mate. Maybe you consider the term 'going beyond' to not be the same thing, but you clearly want/need to have something in place of how we currently communicate should it not proove adequate to the task of finding Universal Truth.
In other words you want/need to replace it becuase it restricts our thinking.
3. All freedoms carry boundaries. Absolute freedom would be being allowed to do literally anything without censure, conscience or guilt - e.g. kill at will with no remorse, no social or psychological mechanism blocking my actions. And for all you know that may be how we get to the UT - to act without boundaries -and even that model has it's own, inbuilt limitation in that you are under threat from anyone else wishing to kill at will. All you'd do by removing word based language (as opposed to say visual, aural or smell) is create another set of boundaries in your search.
Please note that all I've done here is quote what you said in response to my questions, not put words in your mouth. I'm interested in this debate because I have often argued that one of the reasons science can't explain the possible existance of phenomena like ESP is because we don't the language or instrumentaiton to explain and measure the physical activity that happens, so any possible solutions will be appreciated!!
I note that you talk about finding the UT 'in nature'...again, you need to be more specific because at the moment it's all woolly, airy terms supported with subjective comments like 'the miracle that is me or you or any human being''
And what is to say that your new form of communication won't be equally adept at spreading falsehood?
kyser_soze said:
1.In my opinion universal truth is something that humans are part of, not outside of. It is simply what is. Everything that is, that is done, that is experienced, that is sensed. For humans to find it, they must stop asking questions. Coz the answer is only revealed when we stop asking for it. Now if that sounds like hippy nonsense, then so be it, but you asked what I meant by it.
Remember, all the philosophers in history never agreed on everything, they can’t, their tool in trade is language. Philosophy is but part of the whole (of the human construct).
Truth need not be ‘applied’ since it already is. If human beings die off, then this truth that is available to them now, will no longer be available to them.
Furthermore truth can only be found outside of dogma (a human construct), and therefore is not to be found in religions or politics.
2. I don’t want to replace language. If I want to go beyond it, how could I possibly do that when language has got me thus far? I can’t get rid of part of my progression retrospectively. I just cannot see how you can perceive from what I’ve written that I want to get rid of language. At the minute it seems difficult to communicate about this what-is-beyond-language, but plenty of people know what is meant by it. I think it is obviously in the unconscious, and only when an awareness connects with an individual, can they talk about something that has no labels or symbols as accorded by language.
Thinking that language is the highest medium restricts our thinking, not having language. If there are higher forms - there are - then we can't get to them until we've done language so to speak.
Look mate, the trouble is that i'm trying to put into words things that i know for sure since i've experienced them, but in ways that avoid immediate reactions based on the reader's own context of life. I often get into conversations in the town i live in with people from all over, and when you have the immediate cut and thrust of a spoken conversation, shared understandings can be reached far quicker, and from there things can be explored, proved, disproved, accepted on probability and so on.
Anyway let me look at number three.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
OK, I'm not going to bother arguiing that you are seeking to not use language anymore, but that you still want to use a form of communiction to get over you UT (which you are quite right, is a meaning-free load of hippy bollox)
*bangs head on desk*
So to find this universal truth we stop asking questions? And yet we must experience everything that is done, experienced etc.
But how am I to know everything to experience without questions? How will I know that I've experienced everything if I don't ask myself 'Have I experienced everything?'
And if you said something like this to me in a conversation I'd still say you were talking cod-mysticism.
And the whole concept of 'revealed truth' is inherently religious.
*bangs head on desk*
So to find this universal truth we stop asking questions? And yet we must experience everything that is done, experienced etc.
But how am I to know everything to experience without questions? How will I know that I've experienced everything if I don't ask myself 'Have I experienced everything?'
And if you said something like this to me in a conversation I'd still say you were talking cod-mysticism.
And the whole concept of 'revealed truth' is inherently religious.
kyser_soze said:
The last question first: i'm not looking for a new communication!!! I'm looking to expand my ability to communicate the things i experience, and at the same time expand the horizons of my life. Universal truth, currently to me, is very difficult to 'explain' using 'language'. I have read in many places how the very discovery of this 'UT' is an individual thing and can only be understood by others or not understood by others. But it certainly can't be taught, coz language is unavailable to it. It has to be found by each and every one of us. I'm sure that still sounds woolly, but look man, that's the fucking problem!
Science can only explain certain things. What can't be explained isn't science. And if a person experiences 'physical activity', but can't explain it in language, does that mean he/she did not experience it??!!
But i note your need, as a human, to want to explain and measure things! Stop!! Part of the truth is just accepting things sometimes. A good painting or a blinding piece of music or a skillful passage of footy play cannot be measured or explained.
More generally i've searched life for all i can since the day i can remember. For some reason it was in me from the start. I remember very clearly the day when i stopped asking the question i'd been asking all my life: suddenly it was all clear.
Part of my fascination with language is that it is our defining mechanism as humans. We organise our whole life through it. Yet we have constant war. I believe strongly that if we can go beyond language as a species then we will finally solve the war problem.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
You're talking about seeing God fela. It's not the same language and I know you'll disagree with me, but this whole hankering after a universal truth, this acceptance that 'there are things we can never know and should accept as they are', that it's an 'individual experience' and that you need to 'open your mind' to receive it...
It's religion, and that as far as I;m concerned, marks the end of the conversation. I've heard the same arguments, but with the words 'Universal Truth' replaced by 'God'.
It's religion, and that as far as I;m concerned, marks the end of the conversation. I've heard the same arguments, but with the words 'Universal Truth' replaced by 'God'.
kyser_soze said:
Hope your head's recovered.
Not sure about the brain though!
What i say is 'hippy bollox'. Conveniently dismissed by language! It is actually not 'meaning-free' at all. To you, yes, but that's your reaction to it. It is not that. Can you not see that you're talking about your reaction to it, not it itself?
In UT it is not hippy bollox, it is what it is. What any one person may think of it is based on their own unique collection of previously gathered experiences.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
fela, everything you've described is a non-theological variant of believing in God - the Universal Truth, the notion that it is 'revealed' rather than discovered through inquiry...it's religion fela, because people come to God/Buddha/Mohammed/Krishna via private revalation of 'the truth' of '*insert deity here*'s word'...and that whole bit about not questioning why things are, just accepting it as part of 'the truth as revealed'
You might not like it, but you are talking about religious faith here, not some alternative view of the universe. I know that you don't think that, but all the things you've descrbed are essential components of religious conversion and faith. What you're describing here is revalation that by subsuming yourself to something higher (in your case nature) the world is revealed to you.
Well, sorry mate but I went through that whole faith thing when I was a kid and I'd rather have a vague feeling of insecurity than believe in some personally revealed 'truth' that I couldn't adequately explain to anyone else.
You might not like it, but you are talking about religious faith here, not some alternative view of the universe. I know that you don't think that, but all the things you've descrbed are essential components of religious conversion and faith. What you're describing here is revalation that by subsuming yourself to something higher (in your case nature) the world is revealed to you.
Well, sorry mate but I went through that whole faith thing when I was a kid and I'd rather have a vague feeling of insecurity than believe in some personally revealed 'truth' that I couldn't adequately explain to anyone else.
kyser_soze said:
No, not talking about God the way you think i am.
I've never hankered after universal truth (which has been your term that i faithfully have followed on this thread) or indeed truth. What i've always looked for is meaning to why i'm here and what my role in life is. I never found this 'truth' i talk of, i think of it as having uncovered it.
Using language that gets near it: freedom, self-empowerment, truth, justice, independence.
Religion is the exact opposite of this thing, whatever it might be labelled, UT thus far. But the problem with this labelling, this use of language to symbolise something, is that it invites no flexibility in its meaning. Since what is to be uncovered can only be done individually, that immediately means religions are out the window.
btw, how can you be interested, yet after a couple of exchanges say the end of the conversation has been reached??
kyser_soze said:
I really have to be off, but you're way off mark here. I've not done any kind of subsuming, and i recognise nothing higher, and the world has not been revealed to me.
Surely you can see how easily you button-hole my language. Language at once used to quantify me, and reduce my thoughts to hippy bollox. I"ve not the time now, but i'll be back another time.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
fela fan said:
I will come back to this cos I've just had work arrive on my desk but...
v. found, (found) find·ing, finds
v. tr.
1. To come upon, often by accident; meet with.
2. To come upon or discover by searching or making an effort: found the leak in the pipe.
v. un·cov·ered, un·cov·er·ing, un·cov·ers
v. tr.
1. To remove the cover from: uncovered the saucepan.
2. To manifest or disclose; reveal: uncovered new evidence.
If anything, the correct word to use for what you are describing is 'found' rather than uncovered, but they essentially mean the same thing.
kyser_soze said:
There's only one freedom, any others you think of are human constructs. If we achieve the one freedom, we'd not be doing negative things like killing. And we'd not be guided by social or psychological mechanisms, no they don't drive freedom. We'd be guided by this 'truth', and no sooner than we commit a wrongdoing than we are no longer in freedom. The very fact that one has freedom stops us from harming others or existence in general. One of the understood 'laws' is that compassion and empathy rule. Killing is impossible to a free person. Herein lies the connundrum.
Part of freedom, and yes it does have boundaries coz if you go beyond one of them then you no longer exercise freedom, means taking responsibility for one's own life. I think a major effect of having freedom is that one is no longer subject to emotional reactions to external sources. Whatever happens outside of oneself is accepted.
Full freedom is what people fear, it requires full responsibility, and as you can see, while we have God we always have someone higher than ourselves to blame or seek guidance from. To experience full freedom means there can be no God.
And no dogma, and no-one else showing you how it's done. It's a totally individual journey, that can only be accessed individually. No dogma, no politics, no religions, and certainly no nation states.
kyser_soze said:
No again. Everything i'm attempting to describe is entirely my own voice based on my previous experiences in life. And the absolute whole point that underscores what i'm trying to say is that i don't believe in anything. Freedom means leaving believing behind. Religion is something organised by others for others.
What i'm talking about can only be done individually, and therefore it is impossible to be tied to any religion, or anything at all that is a human construct.
The thing about accepting is that since one cannot change the past, then why fucking try! All we are left with in the present is feelings of anger or whatever negativity. So we lose out twice. By accepting in the first place we lose out no times compared to two times.
kyser_soze said:
I don't doubt what you did when you were younger, but it's nothing to do with what i'm talking about here. It's not a 'thing' or a fad or a quick remedy, in fact it's nothing that can be pigeon-holed by a mere piece of language.
More importantly, to try and help you a bit more, if you think it's been organised in any way, then it's not what i'm talking about.
It is emphatically not about believing something, that is the preserve of dogmas. Not about faith, that is god and religions.
The whole insecurity of it all leads to the very security that folk want in their lives. Language helps drive our need for security, and drives our fears; what is beyond language tells us to simply forget about security and fear. But that concept must be found/uncovered/discovered (take your pick) outside of language.
kyser_soze said:
Oh the irony! Mate in this discussion the last thing we need is a dictionary. There's me talking about things that i've experienced beyond language, and you're trying to drag me back to limited meanings according to some book some man has compiled! It doesn't really matter what verb you use, i'm describing something, necessarily using language, to the best of my ability. If you want to reduce all meanings in life to what can be verified in the dictionary, then we'll never get anywhere in this discussion.
Maybe that might help you with the questions you have: don't live within boundaries set by dictionaries. For a start they can't cover connotational and metaphorical meanings, never mind the actual going beyond of language itself.
Do you think that it would be impossible for any human to describe it, if they had experienced it, or just you. Can you really make that generalization. Dunno if the Buddha thought that he could use language to succesfully describe complete unsurpassed enlightenment. If he did, you probably haven't got many supporters on this one. Seeing as its probably not bigger than that.
Erm, dunno about these ideas about "real truths" that mankind cannot coprehend. <Frown> Why would we be unable to comprehend them then. Maybe emothionally. Or have difficulty assimilating it into other things (like going to work, the fact that my partner doesn't love me). But why would it be impossible, why?
Erm, dunno about these ideas about "real truths" that mankind cannot coprehend. <Frown> Why would we be unable to comprehend them then. Maybe emothionally. Or have difficulty assimilating it into other things (like going to work, the fact that my partner doesn't love me). But why would it be impossible, why?
118118 said:Do you think that it would be impossible for any human to describe it, if they had experienced it, or just you.
...
Erm, dunno about these ideas about "real truths" that mankind cannot coprehend. <Frown> Why would we be unable to comprehend them then. Maybe emothionally. Or have difficulty assimilating it into other things (like going to work, the fact that my partner doesn't love me). But why would it be impossible, why?
It can be described, i've been making efforts on this page!
The common link between all who i've read talk about this that they state that only the individual can complete the task to find what's beyond language (this being the term i favour, above, say, truth, light, peace, enlightenment, UT, freedom). They can be pointed in the right direction, but it is purely an individual journey, but the consensus is that once found, the finders know they've found it.
Everything else looks different afterwards.
118118 said:
Interesting choice of words mate. Mankind, no. Individuals yes.
And emotions have nothing to do with it. It is the need to rise above emotions which are nothing more than reactions to everything else thus experienced by the person having emotions to external events.
The real work is not outside of a person, it is on oneself. 'Heaven' is not a place somewhere far off, it is within us...
kyser
let me try and add some writings from those more articulate on the topic than myself.
Here's erich fromm (recently recommended me by barking, praise be to the lad!):
"Consciousness represents social man, the accidental limitations set by the historical situation into which an individual is thrown. Unconsciousness represents universal man, the whole man, rooted in the Cosmos; it represents the plant in him, the animal in him, the spirit in him; it represents his past down to the dawn of human existence, and it represents his future to the day when man will have become fully human, and when nature will be humanized as man will be "naturalized."
Making the unconscious conscious transforms the mere idea of the universality of man into the living experience of this universality; it is the experiential realization of humanism."
http://eqi.org/fromm.htm
My views thus far would say that the role of language has blocked man from finding his 'unconsciousness'.
More digging to come.
let me try and add some writings from those more articulate on the topic than myself.
Here's erich fromm (recently recommended me by barking, praise be to the lad!):
"Consciousness represents social man, the accidental limitations set by the historical situation into which an individual is thrown. Unconsciousness represents universal man, the whole man, rooted in the Cosmos; it represents the plant in him, the animal in him, the spirit in him; it represents his past down to the dawn of human existence, and it represents his future to the day when man will have become fully human, and when nature will be humanized as man will be "naturalized."
Making the unconscious conscious transforms the mere idea of the universality of man into the living experience of this universality; it is the experiential realization of humanism."
http://eqi.org/fromm.htm
My views thus far would say that the role of language has blocked man from finding his 'unconsciousness'.
More digging to come.
And here's richard alpert in an interview:
DSN: So you tour as much to work on yourself as anything else?
ALPERT: Everything I do is to work on myself. Right now, that's all I'm doing. It just happens that you're getting an interview out of it.
I don't know what else to do other than to work on myself for everybody else. I mean, it's part of all of us, collectively, but I am working on myself in order to get my heart open, my mind quiet, get everything settled in such a way that I can be there for awhile.
http://www.doitnow.org/pages/alpert.html
I notice he says part of his work is to silence his mind. This to me resonates with the limitations that language places on our ability to find inner contentment, the collective version of which i believe will lead to a human world without war.
He also wants to open his heart. Now the heart lives and exists without language. In my opinion the heart's language has been suppressed by the mind's language, which itself is a mirror of the society in which we have been brought up. Maybe that's more strictly true of society's that worship consumersism, but whatever.
DSN: So you tour as much to work on yourself as anything else?
ALPERT: Everything I do is to work on myself. Right now, that's all I'm doing. It just happens that you're getting an interview out of it.
I don't know what else to do other than to work on myself for everybody else. I mean, it's part of all of us, collectively, but I am working on myself in order to get my heart open, my mind quiet, get everything settled in such a way that I can be there for awhile.
http://www.doitnow.org/pages/alpert.html
I notice he says part of his work is to silence his mind. This to me resonates with the limitations that language places on our ability to find inner contentment, the collective version of which i believe will lead to a human world without war.
He also wants to open his heart. Now the heart lives and exists without language. In my opinion the heart's language has been suppressed by the mind's language, which itself is a mirror of the society in which we have been brought up. Maybe that's more strictly true of society's that worship consumersism, but whatever.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Sorry fela, but I'm a materialist and this stuff is Pixie territory.
And you're failing to understand my position completely - I'm pointing out that the stuff you're talking about is basically the same set of processes and belief that goes into building a religion. Because you do have belief fela - you believe in your own method/approach/thinking and that through doing whatever it is you do or don't do you will evenetually arrive at/find/uncover/whatever at some better place/higher state/awareness/whatever, and everything you've written so far is the same thing people go through when they subsume themselves in religious faith.
As for that Fromm quote, I can't believe that it comes from the same person who wrote that great quote abotu disobedience - 'spirit'; 'rooted in the cosmos'; 'the whole man'...doesn't work for me at all. AFAIC there is no 'greater truth' in the universe beyond what we experience with out senses. We can't unlock our subconcious/unconcious I think for very good reasons concerned with how we evolved.
Anyway, whatever. I take your point about how langauge can limit us, but the rest of it...while you might not see it yourself fela, what you're describing is a form of belief and is the basis of religious belief (which is different from a codified religious text which you should have picked up on from what I said) for millions of people.
That coupled with the constant contradictions in what you say and the constant use of words that can change as and when you are challenged in how you use them.
So...I agree with your basic point about how langauge can limit, am sorry we couldn't expand that to include music, small, visual langauge in art and sculpture and architecture and the different limitations of each but hey.
And you're failing to understand my position completely - I'm pointing out that the stuff you're talking about is basically the same set of processes and belief that goes into building a religion. Because you do have belief fela - you believe in your own method/approach/thinking and that through doing whatever it is you do or don't do you will evenetually arrive at/find/uncover/whatever at some better place/higher state/awareness/whatever, and everything you've written so far is the same thing people go through when they subsume themselves in religious faith.
As for that Fromm quote, I can't believe that it comes from the same person who wrote that great quote abotu disobedience - 'spirit'; 'rooted in the cosmos'; 'the whole man'...doesn't work for me at all. AFAIC there is no 'greater truth' in the universe beyond what we experience with out senses. We can't unlock our subconcious/unconcious I think for very good reasons concerned with how we evolved.
Anyway, whatever. I take your point about how langauge can limit us, but the rest of it...while you might not see it yourself fela, what you're describing is a form of belief and is the basis of religious belief (which is different from a codified religious text which you should have picked up on from what I said) for millions of people.
That coupled with the constant contradictions in what you say and the constant use of words that can change as and when you are challenged in how you use them.
So...I agree with your basic point about how langauge can limit, am sorry we couldn't expand that to include music, small, visual langauge in art and sculpture and architecture and the different limitations of each but hey.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
It's meditation fela - that's what meditation is about!!
PLEASE can you think about WHAT these guys are saying and in what other cultures and contexts their words have appeared in.
This is what I mean about your 'approach' and how it very similar to religion - you NEVER cross reference what things are being said, and this is something that's come up many times in the past; you say something as beign new'revelatory and it's already there in another form, but with the same meaning.
I'm not having a go here, but can you PLEASE look at what has come before when doing this?
I mean stuff like 'the heart' - the heart is a muscle that pumps blood through the body fela. I can't argue or debate with this stuff.
